Muscle & Fitness Hers South Africa – July-August 2019

GETTY

IMAGES;

STOCKSY

HEART RATE

HELPERS

Build muscle and burn calories in

less time with metabolic training

tools that can take the place of a

cardio workout.

BY ALYSSA SHAFFER

CARDIO DOESN’T

just have to be performed on

a treadmill or a spin bike. In

fact, you can burn a lot more

calories and launch your

heart rate into the strat­

osphere by incorpo rating

metabolic training tools.

“Using equipment like

battle ropes, tyres, sledge­

hammers, sleds, and plyo

boxes recruits a large

amount of muscles, so you

are working at a very high

intensity and burning a ton

of calories”, says Megan

Dahlman, owner of US­

based Dahlman Elite

Training Systems. Bonus:

You’ll keep burning more

calories even after your

workout is done, since these

metabolic workouts tend to

create higher levels of

excess post­exercise oxygen

consumption (EPOC), aka

afterburn. That means your

body has to work harder to

get back to its natural resting

state, so it burns a higher

amount of calories long after

you’ve left the gym.

Because your energy output

is in the red zone, these

workout tools are about

getting the most amount of

work done in the shortest

amount of time. “People

don’t have the time to spend

hours in the gym”, notes

Trent Bender, a functional

strength and conditioning

coach based in Los Angeles,

USA. “Using these tools

helps elevate your heart rate

in a fraction of the time as

more traditional cardio

machines.”

The more intense the

workout, the shorter your

power bursts need to be. In

general, Dahlman advises

keeping your intensity

intervals in the 10­to­30­sec­

ond range. Then modify the

recovery time as a way to

increase the challenge. Start

with a 1­to­2 ratio of work

to recovery (i.e, 20 seconds

of work followed by 40

seconds of rest), then shift

by 10 seconds (work

20 seconds, rest 30; work

20 seconds, rest 20; work

20 seconds, rest 10). “That

will increase the cardio­

vascular demand since you

have less time to get your

breathing back to normal

before starting off on the

next interval”, she says.

You can use these power

TRAINING CARDIO

26 | M&F HERS | JUL/AUG 2019